Automated pure tone audiometry with true wireless stereos earbuds

Abstract

Amounts of automated pure tone audiometer applications have been developed for personal terminals in recent years. However, most of them require specifically designed headphones, which are usually expensive and not accessible to most people. The commercially available true wireless stereos earbuds (e.g., Honor Flypods and Apple Airpods) got a prevalence in recent years. In this study, Flypods were used in a specifically developed automated audiometer whose algorithms and calibrations were modified for wireless earphones. The calibration was established by using both a KEMAR manikin and a loudness comparison method. Twenty subjects with mild to moderate hearing loss were recruited in a clinical verification experiment. The average deviation of automated audiometry was 3.1 dB, when referring to the thresholds measured by a conventional manual audiometer with a pair of TDH 39 headphones. Most (63.2%) of the deviations were under 5 dB. The sensitivity and specificity across frequencies from 125 to 8000 Hz were 95.4% and 62.6%, respectively. The results demonstrate that it is practical to utilize this sort of affordable wireless earphones for preliminary hearing level screening.